


The Frogs

by FeralCreed



Category: Original Work
Genre: Character Turned Into a Ghost, Original Character Death(s), Original Character(s), POV Original Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-13
Updated: 2019-11-13
Packaged: 2021-01-29 19:10:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21415225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FeralCreed/pseuds/FeralCreed
Summary: I wrote this for a Halloween story contest and decided to cross-post it here. The setting is an island that is mostly jungle, with a relatively small population centered in one town. The story is about a teenager who drowned and turned into a vengeful ghost, and his desire to murder his older brother, who he believed responsible for his death. It is narrated by a third party decades after the events in the story took place.
Kudos: 1





	The Frogs

“That was pretty good,” he admitted. “All right, I got a story too. You guys know about the waterfall near town, right?” He waited for at least one person to nod in agreement before he kept going. “Well there's another one that used to be a popular place for people to hang out. Nobody knows where it is any more, but there's all kinds of ideas. The only thing anyone can agree on is why all the trails to it were boarded up and people were told never to go there.

“Every spring and summer, it was full of whistling frogs. Used to be that you'd hear them all the time. Even if you were swimming in the pool under the waterfall, for every frog you were chasing in the water, there would be a dozen more sitting in the trees and on the rocks, singing their hearts out. You could hear them for a mile around. Finding the waterfall was easy, back then, you just had to listen for the frogs and follow the sound. 

“There were these twin brothers who were born and raised on the island. Matthew was the older one and Max was the younger one. And one night in August, Max decided that he wanted to go to the waterfall. It was the kind of hot, humid night where most people don't want to really do anything. Matthew wanted to stay inside instead of taking a long walk. Max convinced him that going for a swim under the waterfall would help him cool down. So he gave in and followed Max into the jungle. 

“Now, this was a long time ago. The island wasn't as...” Rowan paused, trying to think of the word. Ah, he had a story to tell. He'd use a different one. “There weren't as many people living here. The trails in the jungle weren't as clearly marked and there were no signs for what went where. People could get lost if they weren't paying attention, especially at night. That's why their parents had warned them not to go out there after dark, same as most other parents on the island. 

“But they were teenagers and they didn't want to listen, so they went anyway. They were going to navigate the trails by moonlight, and their plan to find the waterfall was just to follow the paths that led toward the sounds of the frogs. It wasn't the best idea, but the boys had been hiking in the jungle with their father for years. They thought they would know pretty soon if they went somewhere they'd never been before and it would be easy for them to turn around.” 

Of course, anyone with any common sense would realize that that was a horrible idea and that the boys should have at least taken a lamp with them. But hindsight, as they say, is 20/20. And there was no telling teenagers not to do something once they'd set their mind to it. Rowan was already running into that particular predicament with his own daughter, who was fourteen. 

“As it turned out, they were right. They could hear the frogs as soon as they set foot in the jungle. Finding the right path was easy, and the waterfall wasn't far from town, so it only took them about half an hour to find it. Just like Max said, the water was cold and clear, even though it was the middle of summer, and it wasn't long before they both dove in. They swam around for hours, trying to catch frogs, splashing water at each other, picking up shiny rocks from the bottom of the pool. They only went home because they wanted to sneak back into the house before anyone realized they had gone out, because they'd get in trouble.” 

Which was pretty much the only smart thing that either of them did in the rest of the story, but then again, you couldn't expect much from teenagers, could you? 

“Max wanted to go out swimming at the waterfall just about every night after that. It was a beautiful place at night. The jungle thinned out enough that the pool was in moonlight. Whenever the moon was more than half full, you could see what you were doing easily, and when it was a full moon, you might as well be sitting in your living room at home, it was so bright. Neither of the boys were afraid of getting hurt there. 

“But eventually Matthew got bored of doing the same thing every night. When Max said he was going to the waterfall again, Matthew wouldn't go with him. Max decided to leave and go to the waterfall alone. He wasn't back in the morning, when Matthew woke up, so he told their parents that Max would sneak out to the waterfall every night and that he probably got lost out there. Of course, their parents were worried that something had happened. So they organized a search party.” 

Maybe it was because he was a parent himself, but he was really thinking that the adults were the only smart ones involved in this whole thing. God, he really was getting old. He remembered thinking, when he heard this story as a kid for the first time, that the parents had been overbearing and shouldn't have been so worried about their kid. But then he'd found out what had happened and had quickly changed his mind with that new information in mind. 

“They found Max. Kind of. They found where he'd folded up his clothes at the waterfall before jumping into the water, but he wasn't there, and they couldn't find any sign of him no matter where they looked. After days of searching, they had to give up. They told Matthew and his parents that Max was dead. It wasn't what any family wanted to hear, but the island was only so big, and someone could only survive for so long on their own. So the search party all went home, and after the funeral, people stopped talking about Max. It was bad luck to speak of the dead. 

“But Matthew was angry that everyone seemed to have forgotten about his brother. He went out to the waterfall every night the next summer. Or, at least, he tried. The first day he went out there, the frogs were quiet. No matter where he went, he couldn't hear them, and he was counting on the noise of the frogs to lead him to the waterfall, so he gave up and went back home. The main path didn't go straight to the waterfall. It was a much smaller path that curved off, and you could miss it, if you weren't careful. Matthew wouldn't have minded so much if his brother hadn't died the summer before. It made him wary, as it should. 

“But he kept going out into the jungle to go to the waterfall. Sometimes he thought he saw the shadow of someone in the water next to him, like somebody was standing there, but he was all alone. Once he even swore that he saw someone walking into the waterfall like there was a cave behind it instead of the solid rock he found when he tried to follow. It was strange, and he tried to tell people about it, but nobody believed him. They said it was just him thinking about his brother too much, since everyone assumed that Max had died at the waterfall pool. 

“Eventually he agreed with them. What other explanation could there be? Then he went to the waterfall one afternoon and decided to take a nap to dry off. He was tired from all the swimming he'd done, and he didn't want to walk all the way back just yet. 

“But he woke up long after dark. Something had woken him up, he realized. But the frogs were silent, so he had no idea what, until he heard a voice. He assumed that it was a search party, that he'd worried his parents, so he called out to them, saying, 'Here I am!' Then he realized that he was only hearing one voice. One he recognized. It was Max's voice, his brother, who everyone had given up on being alive. So Matthew called out again, overjoyed to hear his brother's voice, before he remembered – it had been over a year since his brother had supposedly drowned in the very pool he was sitting next to. 

“Matthew stopped talking, suddenly afraid, but his brother's voice kept coming nearer and nearer. It wasn't from the paths or the jungle, though. It came from inside the waterfall. He was frozen with fear. But then the voice stopped, and the jungle was quiet. Then he saw a figure walking out of the waterfall, right where he once thought he'd seen someone walking out. It was his brother, but Matthew could see right through him into the jungle behind him. They stare at each other until Matthew heard him talking again, even though his mouth wasn't moving. 

“'I will scratch your flesh from your marrow,' the ghost screamed. 'I will pull the air from your lungs with my own hands. I will kill you here and you will never be able to leave. If you came with me, I would not have drowned. You have to die to pay your debt to me. You have to die as I died.' And on and on he wailed, his voice in the rustle of the trees and the breath of the breeze around them, even though the apparition never once opened his mouth. 

“'The frogs tried to warn you,' the ghost said. 'They always fell silent when I was waiting for you so that you could not find the waterfall. So that you could not find me. They tried to warn you that something horrible waited for you in the silence. When I saw you coming this time, I hid, and they kept singing because they thought there was no danger. But I have outsmarted them. And now I will kill you!' 

“Matthew was terrified and he got up to run from the thing that was not his brother any more. But the ghost was too fast for him. He got in front of Matthew and pushed him out of the pool and towards the ocean. It wasn't very far and Matthew wasn't strong enough to fight back. He was thrown into the sea, and the thing that was no longer his brother, and maybe never was, followed him into the water and watched him struggle to breathe. And then, finally, he drowned like his brother had, like the ghost said he would. 

“Nobody ever knew what happened to him either, not for years. Then a boy who had gone swimming at the waterfall at night came back with an incredible story. A ghost had tried to drown him in the pool, but another ghost had stopped the first one, protected the boy, and fought with the other ghost until he'd gotten away. He identified the ghosts as looking just like Max and Matthew. The only people who believed him were Max's and Matthew's parents. Everyone else thought he was just crazy from the shock of nearly dying. 

“But people kept drowning at the waterfall. Some nearly drowned, and those who escaped all said the same thing – that they felt a sudden fear, and a gust of cool wind, and then the frogs stopped singing just before they were attacked by something they couldn't see. As the years went on, and more people died, the escaped victims all said that they felt like they were being attacked by multiple people. Some even claimed to recognize recent disappeared persons as their attackers. 

“Eventually the legend spread and the town officials decided to board up the trails leading to the waterfall. Nobody was allowed to go there, and most people didn't want to. The ghosts were blamed for all the deaths that happened in that part of the jungle, after that. They hunted people they thought were responsible for their deaths, or, as the years kept going, people they mistook for the people responsible for their deaths. It wasn't safe to be near the waterfall any more. So if you hear the frogs, while you're out there in the jungle, and they stop? You better run for it. Someone might get you.”


End file.
